A good question was recently posed on the Ontario Pathfinder forums: where is the cheapest place to buy Pathfinder books in Toronto?

There’s really not a straightforward answer to this one. On a normal day, the prices at most of the major gaming stores downtown are fairly equitable. You might save a dollar here or there, but there’s generally not huge difference.

That being said, there are tips and to tricks to landing the best prices on Pathfinder materials in the city. As a reference for the frugal gamer, I intend to briefly detail the major gaming stores in the city, what goodies they tend to keep in stock, and how prone they are to put them on sale.

The Silver Snail

Where?

Just off of Dundas Square.

What?

The Silver Snail offers a modest collection of Pathfinder books, mainly focusing on adventure paths and very recent splat books. One can generally find most of the core hardcovers there, but items such as the Advanced Race Guide are more scarcely stocked.

May 19, 2013 Radiostorm Pathfinder, Random Thoughts No comments

After my enthusiasm for the previous two installments of the Shades of Ice trilogy, I had high hopes for the thrilling conclusion. Set in the rugged wilderness of the north, it seemed an apt repose from the confined urban environments of Written in Blood and Exiles of Winter. Also, there was a strong potential for wooly mammoths – always a bonus!

Unfortunately Keep of the Huscarl King wound up being a massive disappointment. I was bored, my players were bored, and I think the universe even became a little bored for having to accommodate this slog.

The trajectory of Keep of the Huscarl King is more straightforward than the prior two scenarios in the trilogy. The scholar Skagni has revealed to you the location of a weapon of ancient power in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords. It resides in the ruined fortress of a legendary Ulfen warrior once known as the Huscarl King. The Shadow Lodge intends to claim this weapon for their own purposes, using it’s power to garner an advantage against the Pathfinder Society. The players must race on foot to the ruined keep, contending with Shadow Lodge agents, territorial native Kellids, and tundra beasts along the way.

April 27, 2013 Radiostorm Pathfinder, Reviews No comments

This scenario is kind of mean.

Not unfair, mind you. I don’t think there’s any encounter in Shades of Ice: Exiles of Winter that tips the balance of power too steeply in the game master’s favour. There are no inescapable death traps or plot devices that funnel players into tactically miserable situations.

But mean. Definitely mean.

Exiles of Winter picks up where Shades of Ice left off. Having learned that the lost scholar Skagni is being held in a Shadow Lodge stronghold in Irrisen, the players hop on the first caravan to the lands of the Baba Yaga. Disaster strikes as a band of marauding ice trolls kills their escorts, leaving the players with the daunting task of infiltrating the walled city of Whitethrone on their own.

April 20, 2013 Radiostorm Pathfinder, Reviews No comments

The first movie in a trilogy has its work cut out for it. It has to lay the foundation for the next two installments without seeming incomplete and disjointed. The best science fiction and fantasy films manage to hedge the line between satisfying viewers and leaving them wanting more: A New Hope, The Hobbit, and Batman Begins.

Pathfinder Society scenarios have to follow the same rule. If players aren’t grabbed by the first scenario of a three-part series, they aren’t going to stick around at the table for parts two and three. Although not perfect by any means, Written in Blood engages players well and serves as an apt springboard for the remainder of the Shades of Ice trilogy.

April 13, 2013 Radiostorm Pathfinder, Reviews No comments

I’ve played a lot of Pathfinder Society. Maybe too much.

Scratch that – definitely too much.

Although the hours I’ve dedicated to navigating miniature plastic warriors across grid paper could have arguable been better spent on personal hygiene and flirtations with the opposite gender, my time in the world of Golarion has given me a keen insight into the conventions and tropes of organized play.

I’ve begun to see patterns. Specific types of encounters that repeat themselves scenario after scenario in perpetuity. Foul encounters. Malign encounters. Encounters that make your skin crawl and your dice fly across the room in frustration.

Today I would like to share with you a list of five common Pathfinder Society encounters that must die.

Five-foot Wide Hallways

There is nothing strategic about forcing players down a five-foot wide hallway. Quite the contrary – it forces a complete abandonment of any type of strategy asides from marching order.

March 27, 2013 Radiostorm Pathfinder No comments

Well it happened. Pathfinder Online is being made. The project’s Kickstarter hit its million dollar goal just hours before the deadline rolled in last Monday evening, it’s success sealed by several substantial pledges at the last moment.

Audible sigh.

Anyone who reads The World is Square on a regular basis (all three of you) know that I have a storied history with Pathfinder Online. I rarely think developing an MMO is a good idea even if you have a relatively robust intellectual property like Pathfinder at your fingertips. I’m concerned Pathfinder Online is a pet idea that has ballooned into an unwieldy time and money sink for Paizo and that these resources would be much better spent on the core Pathfinder pen-and-paper game.

January 23, 2013 Radiostorm Online Games, Pathfinder No comments

The Advanced Race Guide dropped last month, bringing a bag full of goodies to the Pathfinder roleplaying game. Asides from the obvious addition of new player races (including tieflings, aasimar, and tengu), the book introduced a slew of new racial archetypes. These archetypes are only available to single races, and many radically alter the base abilities of their corresponding class. Coupled with the wealth of alternative racial traits that were introduced, I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing more dwarves, halflings, and gnomes in organized play.

It’d be a tremendous ordeal to analyze every new archetype found in the Advanced Race Guide, so instead I’ll rattle off a couple of my favourites.

Treesinger

As if elves weren’t subject to enough ridicule for being vainglorious hippies, Paizo hands them the prissiest-named archetype in the game. It might as well have been called the treehugger. Joking aside, this arboreal archetype is really quite interesting.

September 26, 2012 Radiostorm Game Design, Pathfinder, Random Thoughts No comments

By all metrics, Pathfinder is the most satisfying pen-and-paper game I’ve ever played. The class balance feels good, the math isn’t overwhelming, and the community support is outstanding. However, it suffers from one syndrome that haunts the creation of every new character: feat taxes.

Many veteran players lament that you need three feats to go to the bathroom in Pathfinder. It’s a cheeky musing, but one rooted in truth. Pathfinder’s feats are arranged in sprawling tiers, often requiring an investment of three or more feats to unlock a single more advanced one. While it’s satisfying to work towards a goal, many rungs on the feat ladder are considered either undesirable or overtly mundane. These are feat taxes.

Below I’ve highlighted a number of revisions to Pathfinder’s feat tree to help ease the situation. I’ve focused mainly on combat feats, arguably the worst offenders. Feel free to incorporate these changes into your own house rules or make your own suggestions in the comments.

September 5, 2012 Radiostorm Game Design, Pathfinder 9 comments

It’s been a while since the last installment of this feature. To be frank, I’ve had a hard time finding Kickstarter projects that I find remotely interesting. It seems that the creative tsunami Tim Schaffer conjured up that spurred so many great projects has finally ebbed, leaving in it’s wake a stagnant pool of mediocrity. While that statement might be steeped in melodrama  – I honestly just liked writing it – it’s genuinely taken me a while to find a collection of projects worth blogifying. Enough with the preamble. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s a handful of Kickstarter projects for your consideration.

Pathfinder Online Technology Demo

May 30, 2012 Radiostorm Pathfinder, Random Thoughts No comments

Pathfinder Society Organized Play is great. It allows players to participate in short, four-hour Pathfinder adventures without having to commit to the rigorous schedule of a home game. Overall I’m impressed with Paizo’s handling of the initiative, but in recent weeks my local Pathfinder lodge has been faced with a pressing problem: we’ve run out of low level modules to play and lack high enough level characters to progress to the more advanced ones.

Half of this is our own fault. Our game masters should have discouraged players from wantonly creating new character after new character. Because of this schizophrenic play style, many of our regulars field four or five different characters that all have yet to hit the crucial level five milestone. However, I feel this drive to cycle through characters is a symptom of an intrinsic shortcoming of Pathfinder Society Organized Play.

As it stands, there is no mechanic in Pathfinder Society Organized Play to rebuild an established character. Barring an extreme circumstance such as errata to the core rules, once a skill, feat, or trait is chosen, it is locked in permanently. Put bluntly, this is a draconian measure that only services to discourage players from advancing beyond the first or second tier.

Regardless of skill level, a player will inevitably find him or herself in one of the following two situations:

1. He or she has created a character that is too one-dimensional or weak to meaningfully contribute to the party.

April 30, 2012 Radiostorm Game Design, Pathfinder 3 comments